View all notes
For some people, this life begins with an interest in philosophy. Never mind that they don't know exactly what philosophy is; they just think it's something that can be figured out in the mind, like a twirling star that's an idea that blossoms into a grand explosion. Depending, that explosion might be a revelation or a revolution. Something inside the mind tells you that your thinking can be powerful. But then, the thinking has got to be put into practice, and how many middle-class activists checked into factories to find out what it's like to work? Even though this may have been a rite of passage, the truth is, really not many.[...]
[...] So yes, technically, Ria could sew; socially, she could organize; and theoretically, Ria could think political economics: Marx and C.L.R.James, to be specific; she did her MA thesis on the Haitian revolution.
Of course, this information was scratched from her resume, and the manager, who couldn't tell the difference between a Japanese and a Chinese, gave her the job because he thought if she could speak English, she could be an interpreter. What did he know? His factory had forty seamstresses, three cutters, and three packers, all Chinese. By the time he figured out that Ria couldn't speak Chinese, she had convinced two other college students to join up who could speak Chinese, and they were agitating for a higher pay scale and better benefits. Once, they got almost all forty seamstresses to go to a union meeting of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. But that was once. The Chinese ladies humored the students and went back to work.
Mrs. Lee explained things to Ria. "Union or no union, it's all the same. You got to get paid by the piece. Sew faster. Make more money."
Mo watcher her fingers flip and turn, pause and push, backtrack and cut, the artistry of the craft spinning up the same article again and again and again. "You're killing yourself, Ria," he said again.
"Look how cute." She held up a pair of baby overalls. "Mo, listen, I love this work. I love what we're doing. You should see the women when they come in in the morning. They're beautiful. It's so different from when we began. I'm living for that. I can't let it fail."
But suddenly, there’s Macario and how many others rushing the podium. They pull out their banners: Save the I-Hotel! Fight the Eviction of Elderly Tenants! Shame on you, Simon Solomon!
At precisely 5:12 a.m. Macario speaks: Mayor Alioto and the people of San Francisco. The Great Earthquake destroyed our city. It destroyed all of Chinatown, but we Asian Americans labored to rebuild this great city. Now another kind of earthquake seeks again to destroy our communities and to replace our homes and neighborhoods with financial buildings and parking lots for the rich . . .
That’s the mayor’s Earthquake Party.
I admit. I’m surprised. Life takes that kind of turn. A clumsy kid who just listens suddenly gets some guts. Spits out the cork in his throat. Maybe Phil’s thunder in his chest makes its way out.
You think about it. Food is the basis for everything. Without food, it’s all over. Kaput. They don’t lie when they say you are what you eat. If you can’t get nothing to eat, you are nothing. Nothing. They also don’t lie when they say you eat to live. And you live to eat. What’s someone’s culture but the way he eats? Everybody living from meal to meal, even if it takes somebody three days to get to the next one. Call that the culture of poverty. Maybe you a nomad or you tied to the land. It’s how you get your food. It’s how you organize to get your food. Keep your food. Keep your food for yourself. Who grows it? Cultivates it? Sells it? Cooks it? Who gets fed and does not get fed? Who throws it away? Who eats the leftovers?
What’s the story of the world? How come Magellan comes to bother folks like us in faraway islands? It’s to make their food taste better. Once you taste a secret, you go running after your tongue. It can’t be helped. Once you know this principle of the world, then everything becomes clear. You take Marx. You take Freud. You take Einstein. You take Suzuki. The politics of food. The sex of food. The relativity of food. The Zen of food.
I tell these radical kids, eventually all the answers can be found in food. Are they listening? Follow the food, I say. You born in the city. You forget your connection to the earth. And I don’t mean just Watsonville or Delano. That’s what guys like me have, the knowledge. We never stop. Everywhere we go, we touch the food right at the source. We digging the earth, sowing the seed. We pulling the weeds. Then cutting cane or slicing pineapple. Shucking lettuce or cutting asparagus. Dirt under the nails, under the blisters, in the grooves of our hands. It never washes out.
Then harvesting grapes. When grapes are ready, there’s nothing more beautiful and luxurious. I don’t say this like I’m the grower. I say this because who cannot appreciate the miracle of planted food comes back every year with your encouragement? These grapes are my grapes, my children. The small, sour, purple ones crushed for Gallo wine. Large, green, seedless Thompson for Dole fruit cocktail. The reds for Sun-Maid raisins. But that’s just the earth.
Maybe it’s a couple of weeks. Abra’s got a job with Mrs. D., waking up at four a.m., leaving at five, starting work at six, making it over to the Mission, some sweatshop with all Filipino ladies making jewelry stands out of felt and Styrofoam. Making dollar and fifty an hour. Probably talking unionizing in between. Comes home by three p.m. smelling like glue, just in time to pick up the twins at school and start organizing to save the I-Hotel. Organizing every day until midnight. Sleep four hours, then start again. Something’s got to give.
I see Abra. I ask, “When’s it happening? “
“What?”
“The revolution.”
She’s gotta show optimism, so she says, “Soon, Felix. Soon.”
How many years Joe’s running the I-Hotel? Maybe not forever, and nobody knows how he starts. Gets the manager’s room with his private bath and all the keys, decides if there’s room for you at the inn, collects your money. For some, there’s always a room. For others, don’t bother. For Joe, it’s about loyalty and protection. You in his brotherhood, you stay there. Sometimes I think, who else could do this job but Joe? Think about the tramps and lowlifes coming through. Pimps and hustlers. Addicts and ex-cons. Joe might give you a slim chance, but he wants it respectable and quiet. He’s keeping the rooms for his brothers. Nobody breaks Joe’s rules. How many times I see Joe arriving at somebody’s door with his baseball bat. Guy might be naked. He’s got to run out the hotel or take his medicine. How many rules Joe’s got to break to keep this kind of peace?
Over the years, Joe’s rubbing shoulders with the guys who rise to the top. In case you forget, city’s a port. Tough guys rise from the dock to do the work of the people. Longshoremen with connections up and down the coast, up to organizing us Alaskeros. An injury to one is an injury to all. And just in case, he coaches boxing to every new generation. So when the I-Hotel gets threatened, he gets the ear of the mayor himself, old family friend. Probably taught this kid his jabs and hooks. Don’t let the mayor forget where he comes from.
Macario and I take public transportation back to the hotel. I think out loud to Macario. “Bus is like the hotel. For the people.”
Macario nods. “Sorry about the car, Felix.”
I shrug. “Forget it.” I continue my thinking. “You know this eminent domain? Got sides to it.”
“Yeah,” Macario agrees.
“City can use the power to take away anything for the public good, but who can say what is the public good? More like political good.”
“Public good in our case would be to house the poor and elderly after working all their lives.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“The city has to be made responsible for public housing.” Macario’s pounding on his knee, practicing his speech. “They can use eminent domain to obtain our property, but they’ve got to use it for low-cost housing for the people. That’s what we’re trying to argue.”
Finally I say, “Joe might be thinking like this. Eminent domain, buy-back, realistically, it can never happen. Something gets proposed, goes to court, court agrees, knocks it down, you get an appeal, goes back to the city, win, lose, buying time—not buy back, just buying time.”
“You mean, we’re just using stalling tactics.”
“You never know. We could win.”
“What kind of line is stalling tactics?”
“Line?”
“It’s like this, Felix, a line is . . .” Macario is looking for words.
I cut in, “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? I don’t know what your line is? How’s your party line gonna help me? You get a party, but what do I get?”
Abra and Macario poking around the bones on their plates.
“Felix is right,” Abra says. “Every group is using the hotel to test their line.”
I know the problem. How many old tenants we got left? Used to be fifty. Now, maybe thirty. Every support group attached to one or two tenants, hauling him around from rally to rally like the real thing. I don’t say nothing because what’s an old guy got besides this kind of family, this kind of attention? What does he know about party lines? But he is not stupid. Didn’t survive all these years without learning something.
“Looks like the whole city coming to save the hotel.”
“I hope so.”
The chanting never stops. It’s coming out of loudspeakers everywhere. The whole place is wired for sound.
THE PEOPLE UNITED CAN NEVER BE DEFEATED.
THE PEOPLE UNITED CAN NEVER BE DEFEATED.
STOP THE EVICTION! WE WON’T MOVE!
STOP THE EVICTION! WE WON’T MOVE!
WE WON’T MOVE!
WE WON’T MOVE!
WE WON’T MOVE!
I’m feeling the excitement. They’re telephoning and radioing the whole city. People pouring in to Manilatown. Put their bodies up against the I-Hotel.